PERÍODO ESPECIAL

1989 marked the end and the beginning of a period in the life of all Cubans. The economic
crisis quickly tested the values of a utopian society that was entering the last decade
of the twentieth century in a new period that came to be known as the Special Period.

This photographic series comprises a visual testimony that is very different from what
others have documented of this special period in Cuba.

Youth, my own youth, sketches out resistance and liberation. A tireless bohemia that
survived the social experiment, using whatever strategies we had at our disposal--sharing
a cup of jasmine tea on our empty stomachs just to keep going.

Photography united us as a group and as individuals; an urban tribe that survived the
irreparable effects that the Special Period left on all the generations to come.